The Reed Connection

Of all the political operatives who have disgraced themselves in the Abramoff scandal, none has sullied his reputation more than Ralph Reed. As founder of the Christian Coalition and director of President Bush's re-election campaign in the Southeast, Reed is the organizational mastermind of the religious right, the man who transformed a ragtag network of fundamentalist Christians into America's most potent political force. But now, as he runs for lieutenant governor of Georgia, he is struggling to explain why he pocketed millions from gambling interests represented by Abramoff -- and concealed the source of the money from his fellow Christians.

A protege of televangelist Pat Robertson, Reed has long been the general in what he proudly calls the Christian right's "guerrilla warfare." Working closely with Karl Rove, Reed engineered the defeat of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland in 2002 and delivered every state in the Southeast to Bush in 2004. But his troubles began when he decided to hit up his close friend Abramoff for a piece of the action. "I need to start humping in some corporate accounts!" Reed e-mailed Abramoff in 1998, a year after setting up his own private consulting firm. "I'm counting on you to help me."

Abramoff delivered. Between 2001 and 2003, Reed raked in more than $4 million from Abramoff clients, including an online lottery company and two Indian tribes with casinos. In return, Reed worked, as he put it in one e-mail, to get "our pastors all riled up" -- organizing his unwitting followers to oppose gambling regulations and new casinos that would have competed with Abramoff's clients. Through radio and mailings, Reed mobilized more than 100 congregations to do Abramoff's bidding. "We want to bring out the wackos to vote against something," Abramoff's partner Michael Scanlon explained in a proposal to one Indian tribe. "The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees."

The arrangement paid huge returns for both Abramoff and Reed, who had worked together during the Reagan years for the College Republicans. Before long, the partners were scheming to find even bigger paydays. In one e-mail exchange with Reed, Abramoff cited a prospective tribal casino client and gushed, "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!"

At one point, Reed e-mailed Abramoff, asking for a contribution to his campaign for Republican state chairman of Georgia. "Sure," replied Abramoff. "Give me the name of the entity." Reed responded by joking that the check should be made out to "The Reed Family Retirement and Educational Foundation" and gave a fake address in the Grand Cayman Islands. "Ha ha ha," Abramoff wrote back, promising to send Reed a check for $10,000, which he then exacted from an Indian tribe.

By early 2002, even Abramoff was complaining about the greed of Reed. "He is a bad version of us!" the lobbyist exclaimed in an e-mail to Scanlon. "No more money for him." But the money kept flowing -- and Reed wasn't exactly upfront about where it was coming from. When gambling clients sent in six-figure checks for Reed, Abramoff would pass them through several groups, including a bogus think tank chaired by a yoga instructor and a lifeguard, and a phony outfit called the Faith and Family Alliance. It was a shoddy operation all the way around: Robin Vanderwall, the thirty-seven-year-old Republican "director" of the Family Alliance, is currently serving a seven-year sentence for trying to solicit sex over the Internet from a thirteen-year-old boy.

Now, running for elected office for the first time, Reed insists that Abramoff assured him none of the money he received came from gambling. On the campaign trail, Reed prefers to talk about his own morality. "You are here for the same reason why I am here," he told voters in Glynn County, Georgia. "Because you want to see good government, and because you want to see people of integrity and conservative principles in office."

But even Pat Robertson has questioned whether his former protege let personal ambition compromise his religious values. "The Bible says you can't serve God and Mammon," Robertson told reporters.

Reed is betting he can coast to victory in the Republican primary in June by simply denying the evidence. It's a strategy that just might work in south Georgia, where conservatives pay little mind to the liberal news media. "You know who is going to decide the outcome of this election?" says Kevin Gough of the Glynn County Republicans. "Bubba."

But many GOP officials are calling for Reed to drop out of the race. "He could just be tattooed by Democrats if they want to," says Matt Towery, a former adviser to Newt Gingrich.